Teaching and Learning

We understand why the education system needs to change. As the Factory Model moves gradually out of our schools and we usher in a new era learning. As the knowledge curve extends upwards in our lives, the schooling system moves away from content transmission and moves towards using knowledge to create new knowledge. Developing skills of collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, problem solving... ...unless you're doing NCEA external exams. Exams are solely based on memorising information before you go into them, and regurgitating as much as you can onto the page, to be marked on how well you applied the knowledge you could remember to the problem given on the day. The exams create a need in schools for teachers to follow a syllabus. I lived with a high school science teacher for a while, and although she loved the idea of introducing modern learning principles into her classes, she struggled because of the amount of content she had to deliver to students to get them read...

As an outsider coming to Christchurch, I didn't know one area from another. You could say Bishopdale or Swanson, and it would mean absolutely nothing to me. But I'd heard of Aranui. The stigma of the East side of Christchurch travels far and wide, and is re-promoted continuously. Only at the weekend, an MC at a kapahaka event asked all the participating schools if they were here, and the schools would shout back that they were. When Haeata, the new school in Aranui shouted back that they were here, the MC responded "Oh good, then my car is still in the car park." The fact that this kind of stigma that people are working hard to remove is promoted by leaders in our community ensures that it is refreshed, reinvigorated and continued. This is not however, a single isolated event. It is a stigma that our students experience and have drilled into them over and over again every day. So are all the children in Aranui thieves and vagrants? No. Of course not. They are lovi...

Today this article came up on my facebook feed. https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/03/23/tossing-out-teaching-by-subject-as-part-of-a-modern-high-school-education/ Which is quite an old article, but talks about how Finnish schools are phasing out subjects, to value contextual learning, and learning through projects. When we examine the New Zealand Curriculum, we normally skip straight to the back, where individual subjects look like they dominate, and have major priority (indeed it was the first thing I was taught to look at.) But if we look at the front we see a very different story. We see quotes like this: While the learning areas are presented as distinct, this should not limit the ways in which schools structure the learning experiences offered to students. All learning should make use of the natural connections that exist between learning areas and that link learning areas to the values and key competencies.  -New Zealand Curriculum pp16  And this: School...

Much research around the terms 'modern' or '21st century' or 'future focused' learning have placed several values at it's centre. Learners having a choice in what they do, and teachers creating activities that are authentic to their students are two of these such values that we hear discussed in the education sector. I believe that educators need to explore deeper than these values. Giving students choice about which activities they complete is no longer enough. To ask them to complete a list of "must do's and can do's" or choose from a "learning menu" is not going to prepare learners for their future well enough for them to thrive in a technology-driven world. We need to grow their thinking by scaffolding them to actually own and drive their own learning, which means students need to be in control of their learning from the beginning of the planning process, to the outcome of the learning. As long as adults are planning lea...

Knowledge. What is it? The oxford dictionary states it as "The sum of what is known." School's job historically has been to impart knowledge to it's students. To continue to build on humanities' knowledge by understanding what has gone on before. Until around the 1900's, the sum of human knowledge was doubling every century.  After the first world war, knowledge was doubling every 25 years.  Now knowledge doubles every 18 months, and IBM predicts in the future to double every 12 hours. ref.  http://www.bostoncommons.net/knowledge-doubling/?doing_wp_cron=1479671423.9828670024871826171875 The curve is exponential, and shows no sign of slowing down. So now education stands at crisis point.   We have two options going forward. Either 1. We keep teaching the small portion of knowledge that we can in the 13 years we have students for, whilst letting them miss out on the huge array of knowledge that presides before them, or 2. We offer students...

Learning. Many educators see it as something we need to stuff into learners. As some information that the learner is a vessel to be filled with. Many look at teachers as the shovers of stuff into the vessel, or the crafters of learning to hit the most targets at once.  I don't.  I look at learning as something that students need to love. That students will love if just the right combination of environmental elements are met.  If the environmental elements are just right for learning to occur, then it will happen in a much more meaningful and fun way than if it is poured into someone.  Teachers are the creators of the environment. Their purpose in school is to create the traps of learning that students will fall into. Take an example we discussed today as a group. A toy baby is left lying around almost haphazardly in a junior classroom with a towel, and a bowl of water. Play will inevitably lead students towards a discussion of bathing a baby. This is t...

I've been reading Peter Gray's book Free to Learn recently, which has made me reflect widely on my last 6 years in the education profession. I have thought about the different schools that I have taught at, and the different experiences and challenges that have lead me to where I am now. Peter gray offers a fresh perspective on school. I'm going to start this blogpost with some quotes from his book.  "[One of the sins of education is] Judging students in ways that foster shame, hubris, cynicism, and cheating. It is not easy to force people to do what they do not want to do."   "We rely now primarily on a system of incessant testing, grading, and ranking of children to motivate them to do their schoolwork."  The system itself has fostered what it has been fighting so long to weed out. The system itself has created a culture of shaming students, ranking students, and making learning a chore. "By the time they are eleven or twelve year...